


Dissociation

by shieldivarius



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, KH3 spoilers, Keyblade woes, Keyblades, but I've come to terms with that, khux spoilers, post-kh3, this is going to get jossed by canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 11:06:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18445292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shieldivarius/pseuds/shieldivarius
Summary: When she comes to in the Keyblade Graveyard, she wishes her memories were still gone.Unsurprisingly, Marluxia is dealing with the past better than Larxene is.





	Dissociation

When she comes to in the Keyblade Graveyard, an unknown number of days after falling to Sora (again), she wishes her memories were still gone. Larxene is not Elrena, was not Elrena, and can certainly never become who Elrena was, and it doesn’t do _Larxene_ any good to belatedly have Elrena’s memories conflicting with her own sense of self.

Larxene’s immediate reaction to waking in the ruins is to get off this world and find something fun to do. Elrena’s is not, and there’s an aching sense of loss in her—Elrena’s, that is—Heart that keeps Larxene here against her will. Wandering. Looking at the discarded Keyblades that litter every corner of this world like they might show her something interesting, and warring with Elrena’s stubborn will and losing every time she tries to convince her to leave.

They’re not the same person, no, but Elrena can boast having been a real, full human with a Heart where Larxene can’t do the same, and for a couple of days that gives her the edge every single time over controlling the body they share.

It’s on the third day of wandering that she—Larxene—tries summoning Elrena’s Keyblade for the first time. Holds out her hand in front of her and feels a surge of hope run through her from Elrena’s Heart.

Nothing happens, and that hope sputters out. Elrena’s feelings are easier to suppress after that.

Still, Larxene hangs around the Graveyard. She doesn’t know where else there is for her to go. Daybreak Town, her—Elrena’s—home, is gone. Larxene’s memories of _this_ time, _this_ place, tell her that. The Graveyard became the real Organization XIII’s stronghold, as much as they had anything that could be called that, anyway, so this is as good a world as any to stay in while she tries to make sense of it all. It isn’t as though she’s seen another soul here, and having to fight off a couple of Heartless once in a while isn’t much hassle.

But if she stops lying to herself for a moment she can admit it’s the Keyblades that keep her here, and on the fifth day of wandering through the Graveyard she finds the one Elrena’s been looking for.

Its split-coloured, spiked grip guard is as covered in bowl dust as the keys beside it, but it stands out to her from thirty feet away with a familiarity like lightning through her core. She must’ve walked past this spot a hundred times without remarking on the Keyblade before Elrena’s memories awoke within her. Now she can’t believe she did.

Larxene wraps her hand around the hilt and pulls. 

The Keyblade stays lodged in the ground, and cold to the touch.

Elrena’s frustrated cry escapes Larxene’s lips, and they try again with the same result. Then again.

 

On the third day of camping out next to Elrena’s Keyblade, she’s giving it another go when she’s interrupted.

“It’s not yours.”

So he _is_ here.

“Still going by Marluxia?” she asks, turning to look at him with a nonchalant expression as though he hadn’t caught her shrieking into the aether because an ancient Keyblade wouldn’t bend to her will.

“I suppose that depends on who’s asking.”

He looks the same, not a trace of Lauriam on him, and she supposes she must still look like Larxene, not Elrena, too. There aren’t any mirrors here, it’s been hard for her to say. Would she recognize herself? Would _either_ of her recognize herself?

“It was never mine. It’s _hers_ ,” she says.

He shakes his head. She wishes he’d show his hand, reveal if he’s already figured out how to call Lauriam’s Keyblade, or if he’s stuck in the same place as she is. Why else would he be here? Surely he has better things to do?

“It’s not the same Keyblade,” he says. “It belongs to a different Elrena, it won’t respond to you.”

She frowns at him.

His expression shifts from neutral to amused, smug. Marluxia always looked so smug, carried smugness around him like a cloak in a way Lauriam hadn’t quite had a handle on when they’d parted.

“Ex _plain_.” It’s a demand, not a request. The tone only makes him look more amused.

“That Keyblade never belonged to the Elrena who became Larxene. It just looks the same. It’s as futile for you to pull on that dead key as it would be for me to find Lauriam’s here and do the same.”

He’s not making any sense, but Lauriam was one of Ava’s successors. Maybe he knows something she doesn’t.

“That’s it, then?” she asks. If this isn’t the Keyblade that she—Elrena—has been looking for, and she can no longer call the missing one to her hand, then why is she here? “And where does _that_ leave us?”

He shrugs. “Out of time, I suppose.”

It’s not a satisfying answer. “In the wrong, what, timeline?”

“Something like that.”

She glares at him, for all the good it’ll do. “If you’re just going to be _cryptic_ , you can _go_ , Marluxia.”

He studies her for a moment, then looks away, glancing at the red crags above her as though they hold some interest. “I don’t think you want me to,” he says after a moment.

Larxene doesn’t give two shits if he up and leaves and she never sees him again. Elrena does, because all these years later she’s still young and stupid.

She studies him back while he’s pretending not to notice. Is Lauriam’s Heart as loud inside him as Elrena’s is in her? If it is, Marluxia isn’t giving anything away, unless stopping to talk to her is enough.

Even she feels stupid now, glomming onto him and getting caught up in his Organization schemes the same as Elrena got caught up with trying to find _his sister_ —and getting so close in the process that she’d been burned, instead of staying back and away and remaining as clueless as the first time the war had broken out.

“I don’t especially care.”

He looks back down at her at that, and she realizes, for the first time since he showed up, that Xehanort’s gone from his eyes. It makes sense, of course, and she suspects the same must be true for her—her head is her own, her Heart… Well, okay that’s Elrena’s but at least the desperate, larger-than-life teenaged feelings coming from her are enough to say that she isn’t a Nobody any longer.

“Liar.” Amusement in his face, again. “I have something you want.”

She can’t think of what he could mean, covers it with a laugh and an easy, “That ship has _sailed_.” Young and stupid, Elrena. Young and stupid.

His laugh, soft and maybe only a little bit mocking, echoes hers. “Not that.”

He holds out his hand and a flash of memory completes his motion in her mind’s eye a moment before a flash of light and scattering of petals completes it in front of her.

“Show off,” she scowls, right on the edge of calling up a Dark Corridor and disappearing on the spot if he’s just shown up to _gloat_. “You said—“

“That the Keyblade from _this_ world wouldn’t respond.” He nods to the Keyblade petrified in the ground next to them. “Because that isn’t how they work, as you well know.”

She could probably have called up that knowledge from the depths of her memories if she tried, but really, Elrena had always been more focused on collecting Lux like a good little soldier than the theories behind why the Keyblade responded to her. _Everyone_ had a Keyblade in Elrena’s memories. It wasn’t a marker of anything like it was now. It certainly didn’t mean you were _special_ or _more powerful_ than anyone else. The absolute _duds_ in her party had shown that quite well enough.

“Would you just say what you mean?” she asks, crossing her arms and poking out her bottom lip in a way that she knows he hates because it makes her look like a petulant child. She ups the whine in her voice to go along with it.

He cringes at the high pitch of her voice, just a tightening around his eyes but it’s enough of a reaction that she smirks.

“The Keyblade is connected to your Heart.”

“Elrena’s.” It’s automatic, she’s spent over a week, by herself, making sure that they’re separate.

“You _are_ Elrena.”

She scoffs. Then, before he can try and make the argument again—

“You never told me that you’d forgotten everything, too. Everything before the jump.”

His skeptical look is enough. “Not even in your days of being unable to keep a secret to yourself for an hour did you suggest you were missing most of your life. You’re as much to blame. More, if we take character into account.”

She fumes at him. Last week if she were this angry she’d be spitting sparks on top of it. Today glaring and wishing her constitution were less human, more Nobody, was going to have to do.

“Larxene.” Her name has weight when he says it, but he’s laughing at her and not trying to keep it out of his voice. “Really. We were right not to trust each other—or, say, _Axel_ —with that information.”

He’s probably right, slight aside. It’s not like they could’ve come to any conclusions about what the amnesia meant without, well, the memories that came rushing back the second time Sora took them down (and why the second time and not the first, she couldn’t say).

When she doesn’t respond, he angles his chin up—aloof, smug—again, and goes back to talking about _Keyblades_. He’s still holding his, red and green and emblazoned with a rose, like he’s taking great pleasure in having access to it when she doesn’t.

“As I was saying, you _are_ Elrena, Larxene. Whatever name you want to go by.”

“I don’t _remotely_ resemble her.”

“I’m not sure; it’s not as though your hair has gotten any better.”

She’d hit him if he wasn’t holding a Keyblade.

“You need to accept that you’re not different people if you want access to your Keyblade.”

That gives her pause, though she should’ve known that’s what he was getting at. “You really think you’re still Lauriam? Because you’re not.”

He’s quiet for long enough that she wonders for a moment if his Keyblade will wink out of existence. It doesn’t. Can you sustain a Keyblade on ego alone?

“No. I’m not. But I _was_. Beginning with acknowledging that it’s _your_ Keyblade, not some other person’s, might get your farther than you think.”

She’s certainly not going to give him the satisfaction of trying that out here and now, no matter how much sense he’s making. And anyway, that doesn’t explain why she feels drawn to _this_ Keyblade, the one stuck in the ground that has Elrena saying ‘Yes, yes, this is the one.’ Maybe it did belong to a long-dead Elrena from this timeline, but if Elrena’s Heart is calling out for it, there must be more to it than that.

Lauriam—Marluxia—whatever—doesn’t know everything. He never did.

“Larxene?”

She’s been quiet too long.

He looks her over head-to-toe, then turns and does something with his Keyblade that calls up a corridor in the space next to them. Light, not dark. She squints at its shine when she tries to look directly at it.

“Show off.”

“Come and find me when you figure it out.”

“It’s been three hundred fucking years, Marluxia. The trail on your sister’s gone cold.”

He has his back to her but she can tell he’s rolling his eyes anyway. “Come find me when you figure it out, Larxene.” The corridor shuts, taking him with it, and she can see again.

She drops down next to not-that-Elrena’s Keyblade, energy rushing out of her like someone had used a grounding rod to pull it away. Accept that she had been Elrena, he said.

She holds her hand up in front of her, thinks of Elrena, thinks of the Keyblade.

Nothing happens.

Larxene screams her frustration, voice bouncing through the barren landscape around her off of every rock.

Easier fucking said than done.

**Author's Note:**

> She's finally in Global!!!!!!!!!!!!


End file.
